THE FIRST UNCERTAIN STEP IN A COMPLETELY NEW DIRECTION.

The oldest surviving photograph in the world was taken in 1826 or 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Titled 'View from the Window at Le Gras,' the photo captures the view from one of the windows in his house.

To create this image, Niépce “treated a heated pewter plate with bitumen of Judea, or Syrian asphalt… [and] kept the camera open for at least eight hours, and possibly as long as two days.”

Writing about View from the Window at Le Gras after the fact, he mused that it was "the first uncertain step in a completely new direction."

History is made by those who are willing to take uncertain steps in new directions.

Put yourself in the shoes of an art collector or museum curator in the year 2217, the same distance from now (2022) as Niépce’s photograph.

How much would you like to own this Autoglyph? The first-ever example of on-chain generative art on the Ethereum blockchain.

By that point generative art is a massive art category, and Ethereum has become the “everything database.”

Across genres, the earliest works matter not because of how they look, but because of their provenance and for what they represent: An uncertain step in a brave new direction.

They pave the way for everything that came later.

Like Niépce, even though you may feel uncertain, now is the time to take a few steps in this completely new direction, and to take them with conviction.